From the Mixed Up Files of a Farming Malfunction
by Mariagoner
Summary: HM: More Friends of Mineral Town. A single girl's guide to mating and creating in Mineral Town. Or: How to keep your sense and sanity while moving into the world's strangest farming community. Farmer/Doctor, Farmer/Gray, 1st Person. Romance, Drama, Snark!
1. Spring 1, Entry 1

**Author's Note:** Ever since I started playing Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, I have been _sucked into _the game in a very terrifying way. And ever since then, I've been toying with the idea of a fun little fic to accompany the game, from the view-point of everyone's favorite adorable farmer-girl herself. There were just so many hilarious things in the game that kept cracking me up-- like how you have to literally _bribe _your way into people's hearts and the way our little farmer reacted when she first saw what the farm looked like-- that I knew writing a fic for it would be comedy gold.

And out of that initial inspiration comes this series. I'm planning on updating sporadically but since the diary entries will be short little snippets from every day for the first year (or so) of her life, they shouldn't be spaced so far apart. In any case, please review if you enjoyed reading this. It _really _motivates me as an author when I know people out there are reading!

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**Title: From the Mixed Up Files of a Farming Malfunction  
Fandom: Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town  
Characters/Pairings: Farmer, Farmer/Doctor, Farmer/Gray, Cast of the Game  
Rating: R  
Summary: A single girl's guide to mating and creating a life for herself within Mineral Town. Or: How to keep your sense and sanity while moving into a farm that might actually be **_**helped **_**by acid rain. Beware snarkiness running rampant!****  
Note: Profanity and eventual sexual content (yes, it's coming eventually!)**

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**Spring 1, Diary Entry #1: **

You know, I remember reading in English class a few years back about a famous poet who once wondered what dreams deferred are like.

Now, being some fancy pansy poet dude, or whatever, he didn't just go ahead and ask people so he could find out why. He had to use some wacky metaphors about drying raisins and festering sores (or was that festering raisins and drying sores?) while he was trying to explain how having hope served to you on a silver platter that later gets smacked upside your head sucks big-time. And not just sucking a little big-time. Sucking _big _big-time. Sucking like a hooker with a mouth full of novacaine big-time. Sucking like a blackhole slowly pulling apart all your molecules into an excruciating death big-time.

Well, back when I was actually _in _school and kinda-sorta gave a damn about learning, I actually liked that poem-- even if reading about festering sores really isn't my idea of a good time. But until now-- well, I guess I've kinda lived my life as a small scale disappointment, to both me and everyone around me. When you're a small time cog in the corporate machine and a girl who's idea of a good time is watching reruns of Friends on Saturday nights and playing dodge-the-obvious-douche-bags when you eventually go to a club out of desperation... well, yeah. You get used to disappointment pretty quickly.

My life hasn't exactly been stellar so far. Honestly, it's like all the days, all the weeks, all the months, all the years-- every single moment I've been slogging through has meant nothing.

But until now, I never really got what having your hopes crushed _really _felt like.

And that's largely because, until now, I never made the mistake of getting fed up enough with my life to give up my apartment, quit my job, cash in my meager 401k and invest in a adorable little farm that was _supposed _to be "charming" and "rustic" and "a real fixer upper" and have real cows going around squirting milk and Lassie frolicking in the gardens and chickens that shoot out eggs every time the sun comes up and happy little villagers coming in to greet me every day and maybe unicorns stopping by to bless me once in a while and--

And--

And--

And--

And find out that I gave it all up for a urine-soaked hell-hole that even the _mayor _of the townthinks sucks like a tranny with a bottle-full of Tylenol.

Diary, I am not _joking _here. If a meteor was to hit this place, it would count as rural renewal. A plague of locusts couldn't do much more damage to the non-existent crop-harvest. Machete wielding bush-men could have greeted me at the gates and it'd still be nicer than the non-existent welcome almost everyone in the town gave me.

And the house I have to live in smells like _pee _because the god-damned puppy that I got-- who is no Lassie, by the way!-- isn't even house-broken. That's right. I move in-- the first freaking person to take on the task of trying to fix this stupid farm in years-- and I get greeted by the Most Morose Mayor of All Time and Pissy the Pee-Happy Puppy.

Of course, on second thought, I probably shouldn't have chased the mayor around with a hammer for a little bit for him coming out and telling me that I had to be thicker than a troll riding the short-bus for getting robbed of my money for this place. But luckily, he's either a really nice guy or the concussion scrambled his brain enough to forgive me afterwards.

So here I am. 22 years old and completely broke, after buying this place here. Single after a string of shitty boyfriends and desperate for any kind of company company. Young, dumb, and apparently living in a rural slum. And apparently in need of a major miracle here.

So. Shit on a shinola.

I've never been the religious type... but this is just the sort of thing that makes me almost want to start praying.

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**Author's Note Part 2: **If you enjoyed, please be a doll and review. It only keeps me writing over the long-run. 3 And if you think this was fun, I can't _wait _to get to get to the part where everyone's favorite shell-shocked farmers meets the town's bachelors. Sparks will fly-- literally in some cases!

And the poem our favorite snarky famer girl's talking about in the beginning is Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred." That's right. Now you can have a little bit of literature mixed in with the farming bitchery. ;)


	2. Spring 2, Entry 2

Thank you all so much for reviewing this fic in the first chapter! I'm thrilled anyone-- let alone five separate people-- took the time to read and tell me they enjoyed it. Seriously, you're all dolls and I can't fully explain how awesome it was to know that I wasn't the only one enjoying this ridiculous little fic. In your honor, I'm putting the next chapter up and working on the third one. I hope you enjoy and keep reading. ;)

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**Title: From the Mixed Up Files of a Farming Malfunction  
Fandom: Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town  
Characters/Pairings: Farmer, Farmer/Doctor, Farmer/Gray, Cast of the Game  
Rating: R  
Summary: A single girl's guide to mating and creating a life for herself within Mineral Town. Or: How to keep your sense and sanity while moving into a farm that might actually be _helped _by acid rain. Beware snarkiness running rampant!  
Note: Profanity and eventual sexual content (yes, it's coming eventually!)**

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**Spring 2, Diary Entry #2: **

Huh.

You know that old saying about never looking a gift horse in the mouth?

Well, weird though it might be, I got the chance to do that today. And while I was doing it, I learned that the animals in this town have really _crap _dental hygiene.

After the fun-filled day of excitement and existential angst I had right after I moved in, I honestly thought things couldn't get any more bendy for me. Well, surprise surprise, you might as well cast me as a guest star on a supernatural soap opera because the twists just keep coming for me. I mean, granted, these aren't actually _cool _twists, like me having an evil twin that shares a psychic bond with the undead, or meeting two hot men*** with really great abs who want to fight over me me _me_! (That can't happen because that would require my life actually being interesting. (And god knows _my_ life being interesting would apparently bend the space-time continuum until the universe exploded, since _nothing_ like that's ever come close to affecting me.)

(***As an aside, the hot men either have to be a werewolf-vampire or fairy-gnome or orc-elf pairing, or something. It's like, if you have two supernatural people fighting over you, they have to hate each other in _every way possible_. That's apparently what make it so sexy!)

But what happened to me today was a twist none-the-less and by god, when I get a gift horse, I check both my pocket _and _it's front teeth.

I'm not exactly an animal person-- which is probably pretty noticeable when Pissy (and yes, I get to name my dog that that when it's his sole _defining trait) _starts spraying away at random surfaces like a leaky fire-hydrant on a hot July day. And come to think of it, I'm not really a person person either-- at least, I'm not if my last, oh, four or five boyfriends had a say.

(Though the last one eventually regained feeling in his groin so I'm not sure what he keeps complaining about. Can you say _frivolous lawsuit, _dear diary?)

Still, if nothing else, I can always sell the pony to a glue factory and pocket the money, right? And god knows, I might _need _it in the coming days. I'm so broke right now, I might have to resort to actually _charging _for the blow-jobs I usually give away for free. It goes against my standards as an ethical slut, diary. My high minded morality's really killing me.

But all joking (who's joking?) aside (and geesh, I'm not _that _desperate yet-- though I might have to change my mind in a few weeks), it's actually scary to sit down and try to figure my situation out. I sunk almost $50,000 into this place-- and even though I thought it was a great deal at the time, the financial tiger I thought I had by the tail is pretty much chewing my ass upside down here.

The entire farm is a mess that's going to take days, if not _weeks_, to clean up. The actual lawn's completely full of weeds and stones and tree stumps and furry little fucking hedge-hogs like to pop up like Satan's Ow Personal Garden Gnome and chew on your ankles when you're just trying to clean the place up to actually plant something. The pond's about as clear as a crystal glass-- that had Pissy work it over with his bladder for a few weeks. The barn and hen-house are both really small-- and even worse, really _empty_. And the house is _just_ small enough to give me claustrophobia-- and _juuust_ large enough to share with a very spewing puppy.

(And the freaking dog-house apparently isn't actually big enough to _have _a dog in it! Apparently, whoever built it didn't take actual _physical mass _into account while doing their planning!)

I'd say the one good point on the farm is that it at least has a beehive, which means free honey. Except, you know, for the fact that _I'm allergic and I could be killed by a single sting from a bee._

Honestly, if I knew where the architect who built this place was buried, I'd take Pissy over to that guy's grave immediately. And if the bastard's not dead, I'll kill him with one of my fabulous array of frightening weak gardening tools and _then _let Pissy do the deed.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm coming off as a grade-A bitch. I'm well aware of that fact, diary. But honestly... when you put so much time and effort into saving up for something... and you think that that something will give you something real in return... and that you'll finally find the place you've been searching all your life... the place of your dreams...

Well, my dream didn't just dry up or pop like a soap-bubble. It's running down my leg like the best part of a bad lay, and making nearly as much of a mess as my last date. And I'm not sure if I can handle that here. Not when I've got a barely functioning farm and only four weeks until the end of the spring farming season, only $5,000 to buy enough new tools, animals and seeds to make a decent profit on, and only a few days to learn how to actually live off the land before I begin to starve and have to resort to eating my possibly STD-ridden puppy.

But as my mom used to say, before she went away, every life has a few storm clouds in it. I mean, getting pelted with the hail of freaking life isn't exactly thrilling but... well, things could be worse.

After all, I got a pony today, right? And even if I have to sell it to the glue factory eventually to keep my hold on my already extremely hypothetical virtue...

Well, shit. Free pony. That's gotta count for something. If nothing else, it's keeping the 12-year-old Lisa Frank fan in me really, _really _happy.

Anyway, I gotta go scavenge for food in the wild like some creepy forest animal and then fight off Satan's Evil Ankle-Biters while I try to tame my own front lawn. I'll catch you on the flip-side, diary. And until then, keep hoping for me!

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**Author's Note**: Heh. I'm guessing if you've read this far, you've already noticed that Farming Girl isn't exactly the most, ah, dainty and demure of all the maidens in Mineral Town currently. Trust me, that's intentional. There's nothing funnier than a fuck-up... and let's face it, you'd _have_ to be a little nuts to sink your life savings into a farm without even checking whether it's worth investing into. Poor Farming Girl definitely has her social and intellectual challenges... but that's what makes her fun to write and hopefully read. She's as screwed up as the rest of us... and thus, the comedy hopefully keeps rolling. ;)

As always, I really appreciate reviews-- they help keep me interested in writing! Please do comment/review if you've enjoyed-- I will definitely get back to you on any concerns you might have private.

And the next chapter is shaping up to be a _lot_ of fun. We have our first human interaction between Farming Girl and the malcontents that live next door... and she'll have more than a few tart words for Rick (among other people) eventually!


	3. Spring 3, Entry 3

Urgh, sorry ahead of time for not updating this fic in the longest. Between having to both come up with and _take _final exams, it's been a ridiculously busy month for me. But when winter vacation comes along, I am definitely looking forward to working on this story some more. (Well... after I come back from my honeymoon, anyway!) Until then, here's part 3.

(And yes, I will eventually start skipping a few dates here and there. Nobody wants this story to go on for 90 straight chapters just to cover one year in our favorite messed-up farming girl's life, right?)

Thanks again to all the wonderful, wonderful people who reviewed part 2 of this fic. I am seriously in your debt and would never have made the attempt to update this fic at this time if it wasn't for your encouragement. Thanks so much and I hope you keep reading and enjoying this story! And believe me when I say that I'll eventually get back to each and every one of you...

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**Title: From the Mixed Up Files of a Farming Malfunction, Part 3  
Fandom: Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town  
Characters/Pairings: Farmer, Farmer/Doctor, Farmer/Gray, Cast of the Game  
Rating: R  
Summary: A single girl's guide to mating and creating in Mineral Town. Or: How to keep your sense and sanity while moving into a farm that might actually be **_**helped **_**by acid rain. Beware snarkiness running rampant!****  
Note: Profanity and sexual content (yes, it's coming eventually!)**

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**Spring 3, Diary Entry #3: **

So. I met my immediate neighbors for the first time today. And they are, in roughly the order I met them:

a) Lumberjack dude. No clue about whether he prances around with women's clothing in bars but he _does _live near an awful lot of flowers. Hmm. Food for thought. In any case, he offered to renovate my whole place... if I had more money than God and decided that deforesting the entire freaking rain forest for lumber would be worth having a new bathroom installed. Still, it might be worth it to kill a few forests to get myself a decent dog house...

b) Inexplicable Pink, Part One: Offered me chickens, chicken feed, and some disturbing speculation about whether her carpet matches her drapes. Nice enough, though, in that Stepford-ish kinda way.

c) Inexplicable Pink, Part Two: Part 2 of my continual speculation about carpets-matching-drapes. Seriously, what do they put in the _water _in this town? Am I going to wake up and find my hair (below _or _above) turned bright orange someday?!

d) Some guy that never left the eighties. Because... seriously? Dude? Head-bands, at this day and age? Dude. Dude. _Dude. _I don't care if you've apparently decided you've got a crush on me and started offering me a chicken out of the blue. I mean, not that I turned down the offer, of course. But... seriously. Head-bands. Start dressing in leggings and gold-lame and you could be part of Poison someday.

e) Old horse guy. Though technically, he's really old cow-and-sheep guy. Which doesn't flow as easily off the tongue, sadly.

f) Harry Potter. Probably not the most accurate assessment in the world-- but you know what? To me, all little kids are Harry Potter. So this one's Harry with, you know, girl parts and no magic powers. Which admittedly, once she told me that I had the shiniest hair she had ever seen, still makes her really awesome. It's rare to find someone that young who still really appreciated the shiny.

And seriously, out of everyone I met today, I liked that little Harry Potter clone, May, best of all. She was just about the only one who didn't look at me like I had popped over from another planet with an extra set of tits growing out of my knees when I talked about myself and how I failed college and came here for a fresh start and was having trouble already.

Not that, you know, anyone was _mean. _They were all approximately sweeter than a couple of grams of freaking Splenda. I left with all of their houses with just about my body weight in pies and assorted baked goods. (Except for Lumberjack dude. He gave me a few pressed flowers to take home. I'm _really _starting to think that I've got a secret tranny in my sights.) And hey, I even got a chicken out of it through the power of my shiny, shiny hair. That's pretty awesome, right?

I mean, granted, about the most in-depth conversation I had was when Harry Potter asked me if why my hair was so shiny and I got to share the magic secret power of egg-whites for follicles until a flock of freaking unicorns managed to magically wander by. Other than that, there was a lot of awkward standing around, trying to find something in common with the loser city-girl college-drop out. Seriously, here's the jist of the conversations we had.

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Lumberjack dude: Yup.

Loser city-girl college-drop out: Um, good day for building stuff?

Lumberjack dude: Sure it is, little lady. As long as you're not out in the woods at dark... there might be strange things there _now..._

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ... ... ... ... oh. Um, I'll keep that in mind. As long as I'm not eaten by Bigfoot, I mean.

Lumberjack dude: You never know in _those _mountains...

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ...Eeep!

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Inexplicable Pink One: It's so beautiful. If only I wasn't dying and my children weren't about to be orphaned because there father ran off for supposedly noble reasons but still hasn't come home even when I need him the most...

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ... ... ... ... oh. Um, I'll keep that in mind. In case I ever need to, er, write out an, um, obituar... erm. Ah... gosh, what wonderful chickens you keep!

Inexplicable Pink One: ::beaming:: Thank you! Won't you have a cookie while we wait for my fragile body to waste away?

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ...You make that prospect sound strangely appealing.

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Inexplicable Pink Two: It's so beautiful. But it would be even better if people stopped judging me for my candy-floss looks and I learned what feminism really was!

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ... ... ... ... oh. Er. I... I guess you're not that familiar with feminism in the twenty-first century? Not... that that's...necessarily... a bad... thing... as long as you... don't feel oppressed... though you apparently do... Gosh, you're awfully pretty!

Inexplicable Pink Two: Oh, thank you? Aren't I just the cutest? Doesn't my innocent fragility, striking beauty and loving family make you feel like the crud wiped off your boots at night?

Loser city-girl college-drop out: ...When you put it that way, the comparison really _is _striking.

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Some guy that never left the eighties: My life sucks! My sister's too independent! My hair isn't teased enough for heavy metal! I have no idea what feminism is! And because your hair is so damn shiny, I'm giving you a chicken right now!

Loser city-girl college-drop out: : ... ... ... ... oh-kay, that's actually really goddamn awesome of you, honestly.

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Old-horse-but-really-old-cow-and-sheep-guy: Have a chocolate.

Loser city-girl college-drop out: : ... ... ... ... oh my god, not everyone in this town's like someone out of a David Lynch mini-series!

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Loser city-girl college-drop out: So, uh, nice weather we're having, huh?

Harry Potter: You're so pretty. And your hair is _so _shiny.

Loser city-girl college-drop out: : ... ... ... ... oh, seriously, I couldn't get you, instead of that goddamn puppy? I swear to god, I think I'm about three seconds away from leaping at you and eating those goddamn puffy cheeks.

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Admittedly, I might have exaggerated some of the conversations I had so far. But still, the jist of it's there. And this, by the way, is roughly only a tenth of the town. I've already run into Lumberjack Tranny, Who Killed Virgina Woolf, Desperately Seeking Feminism, I Love the Eighties, and the coolest grandpa-and-grandkid combo of all time.

Can you blame me if I'm starting to feel an impending sense of doom about what's going to come at me tomorrow, when I'm officially heading into town now that I'm wrangled the Lawn o' Doom and need some seeds to sprout?

Honestly, at this point, I'm just hoping _all _the guys in this town don't look like they're secretly wearing ladies' underwear, adult diapers or a lock of Bret Michael's hair around their neck as secret homage. But I've got to say, based on what I've seen, I'm not really all that hopeful now.

In more throughly exciting, farm-related news, I spent the whole day not goggling at my neighbors' bad taste (head-bands and over-alls and fluorescent hair dye, oh my!) foraging in the woods. Apparently, there's thankfully a few decent things growing out there besides Tranny Lumberjacks that keep warning me about Big-foot. There's a couple of mushrooms, some flowers, and a few herbs that are supposed to be good for my health. The flowers I don't care about, since I'm not into chicks or dicks that are covered in ladies undergarments, but the rest of the stuff I found is awesome. Of course, it also pretty much means that once the charity of strangers wears off, I'll be eating herb-and-mushroom salads day, noon and night for the rest of the month... but hell, it's better than starving. And what I don't eat, I can ship to try and make a little extra money on the side. Things could, theoretically, be worse.

And after spending about 15 hours of clean-up the last few days, I finally have a few patches of Satan's-Ankle-Gnawer-free earth to worth with. So I'm officially heading deep into townie territory tomorrow to get some seeds to start growing crops in. I also need to look into seeing whether I can upgrade my weak-sauce tools so that they're handy for more than trying to bash the brains of furry little bastards with. If I have to use this ridiculous watering can that takes forever to handle for much longer, I might just snap and start coming after more than just the mayor with a hammer.

Wish me luck, diary! Tomorrow, your farmer girl goes off to see the rest of the town's menagarie.

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**Author's Note**: Please review if you're read this. I'm terrifically proud of the reviews that the first few few chapter received (someone's reading this besides me! wheee!) and I'd be thrilled to get any sort of feedback, positive, negative and/or constructive. I'm the sort of writer that thrives on knowing I have an audience and so, I'd be very grateful for any and all reviews. ;)

Also, I'm sure this is really self-explanatory but the people everyone's favorite cranky farmer girl was talking about are:

1) Gotz (Tranny Lumberjack Dude)

2) Lillia (Inexplicable Pink Part One)

3) Popuri (Inexplicable Pink Part Two)

4) Rick (I Love The 80s)

5) Barley (Old Horse Guy)

6) May (Harry Potter)

Needless to say, this is by far the most fun entry to write for this series. I can't _wait_ to get to writing our farmer girl's reactions to everyone else in the game. _Especially _the eligible bachelor (or bachelors?) that she's _actually _attracted to!

And no, farmer girl's real name will _never _be revealed in the course of the story. Why? Because I want us all to be able to step into her shoes for a bit while reading this series and I think revealing a name for her might get in the way of that. I want her to have a definite character on her own-- and I think we've already seen that she can definitely be a cranky snot!-- but part of the joy of the Harvest Moon series for me has always been how well we've all been able to jump into the shoes of the main character. So Farmer Girl will remain Farmer Girl forever more in this series and you should feel free to call her whatever you want. ;)


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